Monica Potts examines how Obama has helped mobilize African American voters — and white Americans motivated by racial animosity:
While political junkies follow Blanche Lincoln‘s primary runoff in Arkansas, another congressional runoff is shaping up to be a historic airing of the state’s racial politics. One of the two candidates still in the race to represent Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District, Joyce Elliott, would, if elected, become the first African American to represent the state in Washington, D.C. Not just since Reconstruction: ever. Arkansas has the dubious honor of being the only former Confederate state to have never elected an African American to Congress or statewide office.
While Barack Obama upped African American voter turnout, and, as the media would have us believe, inspired a new generation of African American candidates in both parties, his election also helped activate white Americans motivated by racial animosity in their civic lives. Particularly in the Deep South the presence of a black president is igniting resentment among white voters. Elliott’s election would be a historic achievement for Arkansas, but the race itself shows exactly how far we are from being a post-racial society.
